It individually looks at our trade relationships with sixty-one nations and nation-conglomerates (the European Union and the Arab League are listed as units – with each nation therein also individually analyzed).

It ain’t good.

Trade barriers take on many, many more market-warping forms than most of us can likely even imagine. To wit – from the report:

Services barriers (e.g., limits on the range of financial services offered by foreign financial institutions, regulation of international data flows, restrictions on the use of foreign data processing, and barriers to the provision of services by foreign professionals);

Investment barriers (e.g., limitations on foreign equity participation and on access to foreign government-funded research and development programs, local content requirements, technology transfer requirements and export performance requirements, and restrictions on repatriation of earnings, capital, fees and royalties);

Government-tolerated anticompetitive conduct of state-owned or private firms that restricts the sale or purchase of U.S. goods or services in the foreign country’s markets;

Other barriers (barriers that encompass more than one category, e.g., bribery and corruption, or that affect a single sector).

Yeesh. And there are likely many others the government missed. It is, after all, the government.

Trading trade barriers – rather than goods and services – leads to greater antagonism. Which leads to more trade barriers (“We’ll show them…”). Lather, rinse, repeat….

Sitting down with nations to try to bring down these barriers nets benefits – in many directions.

(Talking just to talk – just for show – doesn’t. Photo ops in the Oval Office aren’t substantial international interaction. A tangible objective – a seriousness to the niceties – makes a positive outcome exponentially more likely.)

As the relationships thaw – the trade barriers fall. And the parties involved are going forward much less likely to want to shoot each other.